Lady Rose's Daughter eBook

“Nothing of all that will do her any real harm,”
said Jacob, rather contemptuously.

“Well, no. I know, of course, that her
real friends will never forsake her—­never,
never! But, Jacob”—­the Duchess
hesitated, her charming little face furrowed with
thought—­“if only so much of it weren’t
true. She herself—­”

“Please, Evelyn,” said Delafield, with
decision, “don’t tell me anything she
may have said to you.”

The Duchess flushed.

“I shouldn’t have betrayed any confidence,”
she said, proudly. “And I must consult
with some one who cares about her. Dr. Meredith
lunched with me to-day, and he said a few words to
me afterwards. He’s quite anxious, too—­and
unhappy. Captain Warkworth’s always there—­always!
Even I have been hardly able to see her the last few
days. Last Sunday they took the little lame child
and went into the country for the whole day—­”

“Well, what is there to object to in that?”
cried Jacob.

“I didn’t say there was anything to object
to,” said the Duchess, looking at him with eyes
half angry, half perplexed. “Only it’s
so unlike her. She had promised to be at home
that afternoon for several old friends, and they found
her flown, without a word. And think how sweet
Julie is always about such things—­what delicious
notes she writes, how she hates to put anybody out
or disappoint them! And now, not a word of excuse
to anybody. And she looks so ill—­so
white, so fixed—­like a person in a dream
which she can’t shake off. I’m just
miserable about her. And I hate, hate that
man—­engaged to her own cousin all the time!”
cried the little Duchess, under her breath, as she
passionately tore some violets at her waist to pieces
and flung them out of the carriage. Then she
turned to Jacob.

“But, of course, if you don’t care twopence
about all this, Jacob, it’s no good talking
to you!”

Her taunt fell quite unnoticed. Jacob turned
to her with smiling composure.

“You have forgotten, my dear Evelyn, all this
time, that Warkworth goes away—­to mid-Africa—­in
little more than two weeks.”

“I wish it was two minutes,” said the
Duchess, fuming.

Delafield made no reply for a while. He seemed
to be studying the effect of a pale shaft of sunlight
which had just come stealing down through layers of
thin gray cloud to dance upon the Serpentine.
Presently, as they left the Serpentine behind them,
he turned to his companion with more apparent sympathy.

“We can’t do anything, Evelyn, and we’ve
no right whatever to talk of alarm, or anxiety—­to
talk of it, mind! It’s—­it’s
disloyal. Forgive me,” he added, hastily,
“I know you don’t gossip. But it fills
me with rage that other people should be doing it.”

The brusquerie of his manner disconcerted the little
lady beside him. She recovered herself, however,
and said, with a touch of sarcasm, tempered by a rather
trembling lip: